the lost art of making home fries

valtzy

help! i have fallen in love with potatoes for breakfast (which is somewhat of a crazy excuse to make myself french fries in the morning).

home fries for those who do not know, or call it something different are basically chunks of cooked potato with the outsides cooked to a crisp with the insides soft. they are similiar to hash browns (to me at least) except not shredded and hashed together.

UNFORTUNATELY I AM TERRIBLE AT MAKING THEM

i have tried numerous methods which are not limited to

1. cooking them in raw chunks (no parboiling). the outsides don't seem to crisp very well

2. parboiling them then frying them. i can't quite seem to figure out a good time on parboiling them. sometimes the outsides will be too soft and they will never crisp. sometimes they will crisp but the insides are horrendously hard and starchy.

3. parboiling them, a thin coat of olive oil to having the seasoning stick, then cooking in a small amount of oil. these potatoes turn out extremely oily and i am lucky if i find a piece of actual potato in between all the oil.

i'm not quite sure if it's the amount of oil i'm using which is less than half an inch deep. enough to coat the pan but not too little so that all of it is absorbed leaving nothing for the potato to cook in. maybe my approach is wrong?

HELP ME H/A to make some delicious home fries. seasoning/cooking tips are appreciated.

Satsumomo

I'm thinking maybe the oil isn't hot enough?

KVW

Do you have a deep frier?

valtzy

i do not use a deep frier. i just use a regular nonstick frying pan. a deep frier seems like overkill for what i want to make. is that what they use in diners?

i have the oil extremely hot to the point where it definitely cooks on the outside but the inside is still way too hard. one video recommended medium heat and just letting it sit for 10 or so minutes but that didn't seem to work very well either.

VisionOfClarity

I just boil or use leftover baked potatoes for mine. A lil olive oil, some onion, thyme, salt, pepper and paprika in a hot pan and I have home fries. I do something similar with sweet potatoes. Are you making your potato pieces too big?

Orogogus

The Achewood guy, or one of his characters, wrote an article on this once. I haven't tried it myself, but he makes it sound simple enough.

http://www.salon.com/mwt/food/eat_drink/2007/04/10/achewood_excerpt/index.html

April 10, 2007 | A Meditation on Home Fries
Thoughts & recipe by Roast Beef

I think all of us are kind of on a life-long quest for a breakfast restaurant where the home fries ain't completely horrible. You know what I'm talkin' about. I know cooks at breakfast restaurants ain't usually too well trained but dang I have seen some messed-up home fries in my day.

Major Problems of Restaurant Home Fries

1. There is no commonly agreed upon definition of "home fries"
2. There is no agreed upon size for "home fry" cubes
3. Some people apparently think home fries need to be extremely gray and soft
4. No one seems to agree what should be thrown in with home fries (i.e. onion, bell pepper, garlic, etc.) or how they should be spiced
5. I have even seen home fries where the potatoes were somehow chewy. Once you make a potato chewy you are doing things so wrong that you would be better off just not touching the potato at all, and instead giving it to the customer so that he could take it home and try to make sense of it himself.

The Right Kind of Potato

Red potatoes (which are a "waxy" type of potato) can be cubed and throw directly into the pan. Russet potatoes ("starchy") need to be soaked and rinsed a few times before they can be fried, otherwise all their starch gums up the process. I prefer the ready-to-go potato for morning cookery.

The Right Cut

The home fry potato should be cut into uniform cubes about the size of computer keyboard keys. This makes them big enough to get a crispy surface while just turning creamy soft on the inside. It also makes them easier to pick up with a fork and stick some eggs with. Much smaller and they'd be trouble to a fork.

The Right Cooking Method

The best thing you can do to a cooking home fry is leave it alone. Constantly flipping them all around just keeps them from getting that nice golden brown crust. Trusting yourself enough to leave frying food alone is a major milestone on the way to learning how to pan fry. Only undisturbed food can form a great golden crust.

Put a nonstick frying pan over medium-high heat and add enough oil to just coat the entire bottom. When a drop of water thrown into the oil sizzles, throw in your potatoes to make one even layer. Don't stack -- use multiple pans if you need more potatoes. Toss a few times in the oil and then just leave be. In a few minutes of sizzlin' you should see some brown creepin' up the bottom edges of the potato cubes -- that's how you know when to flip them. Let them fry several more minutes after flipping so that multiple sides get that nice golden brown. Taste a cube every now and then to see when they're creamy inside. When they are, you're done. Slide them onto your plate and sprinkle lightly with salt.

The Right Seasoning

If you salted the potatoes a few times during frying and then once more lightly at the end when they were removed from the pan, you don't need a bunch of crazy seasonings. The potatoes themselves have a beautiful flavor and don't need a bunch of miserable onion powder or celery salt. Don't get bogus with your potatoes. I have seen a lot of breakfast restaurants try to make up for all of their other shortcomings (lousy tea, filthy bathroom with a safe in it, waiters with dreadlocks) by putting like ten spices on the home fries.

DANG

Usually home fries cook the slowest of any item in your breakfast meal. Eggs, bacon, ham, pancakes -- these all cook faster. So cook off your home fries first and put them in a bowl in a low-heat oven. Put foil over 'em if they're gonna be in there more than a few minutes. This will keep them from drying out.

There you have it, perfect home fries every time for pennies on the restaurant dollar.

Oh yeah:

Ingredients for One Serving
1 baseball-sized red potato
Oil (olive oil preferred, vegetable oil OK)
Salt

EggyToast

Yeah the trick to doing potatoes in a skillet is to leave them alone. It's the hash-brown rule -- if you flip you get mush.

I also dislike the long russet potatoes, preferring Yukon Gold potatoes for almost all of my "white potato" cooking, simply because they're tastier and cook better. I'm a hash-brown kinda guy, but Beef's recipe above should get you where you need to be.

Dunadan019

the way i always make home fries is to take left over 'baked' potatoes and fry them in hot oil.

don't use fresh potatoes

bake a potato, refigerate it and then the next morning dice it up and fry it.

valtzy

hm! i do tend to flip them when i notice the bottom getting crispy and brown. perhaps i'll just try leaving them alone for a while.

but i will have to try achewood's recipe, thank you orogogus for that link.

shadydentist

One thing I like to do:

Cut the potato into relatively thin (~2mm) slices, but it doesn't have to be precise. Put about a 1/2 teaspoon of cooking oil into the pan, and when the oil gets hot, drop in the potatoes. Add some salt/pepper (or if you can get some, Old Bay seasoning), and remove when crispy.

Sunstrand

If you par boil the potatoes make sure they are somewhat dry when you put them in the pan. Also on the same note, season with salt towards the end of cooking. If you put salt in at the start of cooking the moisture will come out of the potatoes and into the pan making it difficult to crisp the potatoe.

ruzkin

Man, don't do them in a pan or a deep frier. You need an oven.

Cut them into thin wedges - a big potato should be cut into 12ths, perhaps. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C, oil a metal pan, put chips in pan. Rub each chip around the pan first so they get oil on all sides. Crack some sea-salt over the top to help dry out and crispify the top, as well as a little pepper and some fresh rosemary.

They'll need turning once, probably after about 20 mins. You'll know when because the bottom side will be brown and crispy. Leave another 15 mins and eat.

Battle Jesus

I have quite a crush on Heston Blumenthal's recipe for fries. They take a bit of preparation, but they're just amazing.

Heston Blumenthal wrote:

For the chips

1.2kg arran victory or maris piper potatoes
2–3 litres groundnut (peanut) oil
Table salt and sea salt

1 Wash and peel the potatoes, then cut them into chips about 1.5cm thick. (Don’t worry too much about making them all the same size: the variation will give a greater range of textures.) As soon as the chips are cut, place them in a bowl under cold running water for 2-3 minutes, to rinse off some of the starch, then drain.

2 Bring a large pan or casserole of salted water to the boil (adding 10g salt per litre of water), add the chips, bring back to the boil and then simmer until the chips have almost broken up (it’s the fissures that form as the potato breaks up that trap the fat, creating a crunchy crust). It is important to make sure the simmer is gentle, so that the potatoes don’t start to fall apart before they have cooked through.

3 Using a slotted spoon, carefully lift the potatoes out of the water and place on a cake rack. Leave to cool, then put in the fridge until cold. (The dry air of the fridge makes a good environment in which to remove excess moisture from the chips via evaporation.)

4 Pour enough groundnut oil to cover the chips into a deep-fat fryer and heat it to 130C/250F. Plunge in the chips and allow them to cook until they take on a dry appearance and are slightly coloured.

5 Remove the chips and drain off the excess fat. Place them on a cake rack and allow to cool, then return to the fridge until cold.

6 Reheat the groundnut oil to 190C/375F. Plunge in the chips and cook until golden brown. This will take 8-10 minutes.

7 Drain the chips, season well with a mixture of table and sea salt, then pile next to the fish fillets.

Hobbit0815

I personally don't think it's rocket science, and not a stretch to have a deep fryer FOR THIS VERY PURPOSE. Potatoes are part of my soul, and they deserve the correct treatment.

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=9222613

It works, it had a lid so oil doesn't splash everywhere, and it holds a good amount in it's lil basket. (I fill it to the very top of the basket, disobeying the manual, and they always come out perfect anyway.)

I use corn oil, peel them, cut them, fry them for as long as needed until they're pretty and goldened.

Hobbit0815

Also, the reviews on that deep fryer are pretty horrible, but I've NEVER had any problems with it. Mainly, you just need to buy one with a LID, so that the oil doesn't go anywhere.

multimoog

Seriously, I make the best damn home fries. Take a couple potatoes and poke some holes in them with a sharp knife. Microwave them for about 12-15 minutes or until they're soft enough that a fork will go into them without much resistance. Let them cool for a bit then cut them into roughly 1-inch cubes. Melt a few teaspoons of butter in a hot frying pan and put the potatoes in with some salt, pepper and garlic powder.

Here is the tricky part.

Let them cook until they start to brown on the sides you put them in on, then flip them in the pan with a short jerking motion. Don't flap the pan up and down, but quickly back and forth, so the potatoes ride up the side of the pan and flip back down, like a wave. This will take some practice, but if you have a decent coating of butter it'll get easier. Let them cook evenly on all sides, until they're brown. You can add more butter if needed during the frying process.

Ta-da! They are so good.

Edit: My method sounds a lot like that Achewood guy's. So there you go, two home fry experts, agreeing on The Way To Do It.

Battle Jesus

Instead of buying a deep fryer (which you can use solely for deep frying things, and I find them agonizing to clean - others may have differing opinions on that though), you should spend about the same amount as a mid-grade deep fryer, and get a high sided pot, and a couple of thermometers. An instant read thermometer is my preference, and if you want to go all the way, you can get a candy/oil thermometer too (they usually have clips to prevent them from touching the bottom of the pan, which is nice when you're making candy or ice cream or deep frying). Together these should cost you like.. $30-$40 or so, and they last FOREVER. Plus, once you get one you will have a hard time cooking without it. I use mine for everything from meats, to desserts, to ice cream. They are just ridiculously useful.

As for a pot, well, it's a pot. You make soups, stocks, candies, sauces, etc. in it. It's also super useful.

Plus, when you're done with the oil in the pot, you just wait for it to cool down, strain it, and then you can put it back into a bottle and re-use it, provided it is still fairly clear (and I doubt you're going to be making fries in the volumes of your standard McDonald's, so I can't see why it wouldn't be).

Those are just my two cents though.

Although, if you do a lot of deep frying buying a deep fryer could very well be worth it, as they do simplify the process a lot. I just take the Alton Brown approach to utensils in my kitchen, and hate unitasking items.

Bionic Monkey

See if you can track down the Good Eats episode about home made french fries. He goes into particular detail about making sure they turn out crunchy, but not starchy.

Unicron

Contrary to what Americans think, French Fries are actually Belgian (or we like to think so anyway :P). Making proper fries is pretty easy:

1: Cut your potatoes to the 'right' size, purely by preference but they tend to be rather chunky
2: Heat your oil to 160° C (I have no idea what that is in Fahrenheit, sorry)
3: Cook em the first time, for about 5 mins
4: Drain and cool them
5: Heat the oil to 180° C and cook em until they start 'whistling', should be 10-15mins

TADA!

Potatoes: I tend to choose firm cooking potatoes, works pretty well, but over here we have potato varieties for fries/chips as well, might be able to find some of them?

Qingu

I make home fries almost every week.

As others have pointed out, the "secret" is to pre-cook them a little bit before you start frying them. I prefer to cut them up first, put them in a pot of cold water, and bring it to a boil. After they've boiled for just a minute or two, drain them and start cooking.

Another secret: chop up an onion and saute it (and remove) before you put the potatoes in the pan. Throw the onions back in just as the potatoes finish cooking.

I use a mixture of vegetable oil and butter. I also like putting a little paprika on at the end, along with a lot of salt and pepper. You can also throw garlic in, as well as curry powder, though that's non-traditional.

Sometimes I will throw a beaten egg in with the potatoes for a meal-in-a-bowl. I like doing this a lot more than making eggs on the side.

I would not use waxy red potatoes. I think russet and yukon gold make superior home fries. Just remember to pre-cook them a little.

Mojo the Avenger

The goal of all these techniques is to get excess potato juiece out of the potato. Boiling them, running them under cold water, microwaving, drying between paper towels, whatever. Actually if you're making home fries rather than hash browns your best bet is to use a potato ricer. You're making home fries so it probably wouldn't work so well.

In any event, the point is to get the potato meat without the potato juice, so make sure you're doing that.

KalTorak

The Achewood method sounds like pretty much what i do.

Raw potatoes do take a bit of time to turn into good homefries, and if the heat is too high then you risk over-crisping the crust, so by the time the inside is creamy the crust is too hard. There are two you can avoid this.

Slow: Heat the oil over medium heat so the potatoes sizzle when you put them in, then once they're in drop the heat so they're just barely making any noise. Add salt when you put the potatoes in. Cooking them slow like this (toss every once in a while but not too much) will keep the crust from getting too hard - you can speed the process a bit by putting a lid on it, but finish them without the lid so the crust re-crisps after they've been in the steam.

Fast: Stab the potato a bunch of times with a fork, microwave for 1 minute. Turn it over, microwave for another minute. Remove, (peel if you want, but be careful, it's hot) dice, toss into the hot oil with salt. You can leave it on medium heat, the crust and the inside should be finished at the same time.

Artereis

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/06/crash-hot-potatoes/

Everything on her site is amazing, but these are part of dinner almost weekly. I'd be more than happy having them for breakfast, too.

Qingu

Artereis wrote: »

http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2008/06/crash-hot-potatoes/

Everything on her site is amazing, but these are part of dinner almost weekly. I'd be more than happy having them for breakfast, too.

I would hold off on putting the herbs on until after you take them out of the oven, though.

vonPoonBurGer

shadydentist wrote: »

Cut the potato into relatively thin (~2mm) slices, but it doesn't have to be precise. Put about a 1/2 teaspoon of cooking oil into the pan, and when the oil gets hot, drop in the potatoes. Add some salt/pepper (or if you can get some, Old Bay seasoning), and remove when crispy.

This is how my grandfather always does home fries, and they are seriously, seriously tasty. You don't have to worry so much about getting the middle cooked when there's hardly anything you could call a "middle". I'm pretty sure he fried those suckers up in salty butter, though. He's 87 and more physically fit and active than I am, I guess he can get away with it.

lowlylowlycook

You need to buy the Cookbook "The Best Recipe".

They (Same people as America's Test Kitchen on PBS) take recipes like this and test a ton of variations to get the best result.

They suggest parboiling by starting in salted cold water (covering potatoes +1/2 inch) and stopping the cooking as soon as it starts to boil.

Fry in butter with med-high heat.

If you want more I might be willing to type more.